Since the 1970's it was recognized that purely disposing of household and industrial garbage was inefficient, a waste of space, and harmful to the environment. The methods employed largely relied on the use of landfills and incinerators. Landfills were quickly filling, and vast spreads of land were quickly becoming occupied or protected. Similarly, incinerator emissions were being heavily regulated to reduce the release of materials that were toxic to either humans, the environment or all of the above.
It was quickly recognized that a major contributor to the volume of garbage were storage containers for foods and beverages. Typically these containers are made from aluminum, plastics, paper or glasses which are all recyclable. Although many volunteer efforts were established for recycling the bulk of recyclables still remained to be discarded into the normal trash pathways, ending up in the landfills and incinerators.
In an effort to promote recycling, many states have enacted legislation which requires that beverage containers carry a redemption deposit as a technique for encouraging recycling of such redeemable and recyclable containers. When the customer purchases a product in such a container, a container deposit, typically one to five cents, is added to the purchase price. After consumption of the product, the consumer can obtain a refund of the deposit by returning the empty container, often to the retailer, for recycling. The amount of the deposit may be adjusted to create an incentive for returning the container that is greater than the inconvenience in doing so. In these states, retailers generally collect the used containers and sell them to distributors or others who pay the retailer for the scrap value of the containers plus an amount to cover the retailer's handling costs.
In the past, segregation of returned containers has been labor intensive, so that the labor to perform the sorting can sometimes cost more than the increase in resale value of the segregated material. Retail outlets, which often must act as redemption centers, have had to utilize personnel to sort and count returned containers so that such containers could be returned to the proper distributor for redemption. This arrangement has required devotion of an inordinate amount of personnel time, and an inordinate proportion of the available floor space spawning the development of small and automated reverse vending machines for receiving, sorting, and in some cases, crushing the returned recyclables, while providing some form of a monetary deposit refund, or a coupon for redemption to the customer redeeming the deposit on the recyclables.
While many reverse vending machines have been developed, none have provided a solution for dealing with the smell and non-recyclable waste that accompanies these machines at their retail locations. Few customers rinse the recyclables prior to returning them to the retail location for redemption, thus when an automated machine is used the process of sorting the bottles or crushing the cans and/or plastics causes the remnants, often sugary, to spill from their container into the internal components of the reverse vending machine, into the deposited recyclable storage container, and often the remnants spill out to the retail floor surrounding the machines. These spilled remnants not only cause bug problems, sanitary problems and smell problems, but they also present liability problems in the form of slip and fall injuries.
To remedy these issues, many stores have to dedicate personnel to keep close watch and frequently clean these areas to help reduce liability, reduce bug infestation and improve sanitation and smell. However, because a good amount of the spilled remnants are retained in the machine, the problems often persist until the machines finally break from corrosion or obstruction of the remnants. Some machines have been employed which provide access panels which allow for cleaning the internal components, however it is difficult, and often futile, for the cleaning employee to reach around motors, gears and electrical wires and components. These methods not only do nothing to reduce the amount of personnel time required to monitor the recycling areas in retail stores, but they actually increase the chance for an employee to get hurt by having to reach around these electrical and mechanical parts.
There thus remains an unmet need for a reverse vending machine that may be thoroughly cleaned, thus reducing the unsavory smells and unsanitary conditions that often accompany a container recycling area in a retail store while reducing employee time. There also remains an unmet need for a reverse vending machine which automatically cleans itself, thus removing the need, altogether, of using up a retail stores employees.